The Most Courageous Man of the Summer of 2010

By Felix Carroll

Published 1:00 am, Sunday, July 25, 2010

Wading in a pool by a waterfall with all the other hippopotami in a heat wave, we see him: The Most Courageous Man of the Summer of 2010.

In long, dolphin-blue Bermuda shorts that might as well be pants, he begins climbing the rocks. The rocks rise about five stories high above Bash Bish Falls, on the border of Columbia and Berkshire counties.

Climbing those rocks and leaping into the waters below is illegal. The Most Courageous Man of the Summer of 2010 knows this. He knows the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management, which oversees the 4,000-acre forest preserve in which the falls are located, couldn't make that point any clearer.

They've posted plenty of signs. Rangers patrol the falls frequently. And since the state can't assign an all-day security detail there, it has done pretty much the next best thing. It put up an information board beside the set of stone steps leading down to the falls. The board contains grisly newspaper accounts dating back to the 1970s of deaths and injuries at the falls. It's not pretty.

The Most Courageous Man of the Summer of 2010 has taken a moment to stand before the information board, presumably to peruse. One cannot speculate what's going through his mind, but he suddenly seems a bit paler in the face.

Still, The Most Courageous Man of the Summer of 2010 knows that to visit the falls on a hot summer day often means witnessing bodies flinging themselves into the yawning gap of emptiness high above and ker-plushing into the natural pool below. For some people, like him, beholding nature isn't enough. They wish to append themselves to it, to become a moving part of its drama. At beautiful Bash Bish, which needs no further drama, the overall effect is less Huck Finn and more Johnny Knoxville.

We wade in the cool waters. We pretend we aren't paying attention to The Most Courageous Man of the Summer of 2010 because we pretend our 7-year-old boy is not forming an image of courage that's dressed in dolphin-blue Bermuda shorts.

The Most Courageous Man of the Summer of 2010 takes off his tank top. He removes his towel from around his neck and drops it on the rocks. He plans to get wet. He's with his buddies. They have come to the falls to cool down. But the Most Courageous Man of the Summer of 2010 has something else in store. He has come to jump from the ledge high above the falls.

Down at the foot of the natural pool, he takes a deep breath and then proceeds to climb up -- way up -- to the ledge that serves as the launch pad for rock jumpers.

The Most Courageous Man of the Summer of 2010 has done some pretty nutty stuff in his short life. You can tell. Just look at him. He snowboards, no question. He probably does 180 grinds and backside 720s. He probably thinks a lot about ever-creative ways to make gravity look like a wuss. He's probably posted video of these things on YouTube.

So there he is, up on the ledge looking down. As on any nice day, the falls are packed with people. And many of them are staring up at him. Tough boys with tattooed biceps. Pretty girls in bikini tops. Parents with picnics. Babies with binkies.

The Most Courageous Man of the Summer of 2010 fiddles nervously with a sprig of hemlock that sprouts improbably from the hard rock. He looks down again at the radiant green pool. The pool is outlined with a rim of huge jagged rocks carved like arrowheads by the sandblasting sediment of thousands of years.

He straightens his shorts. He takes a deep breath. He steps back, then steps forward as if preparing to jump. But he holds his ground instead. He looks down again.

With probably two dozen strangers staring up at him in anticipation, The Most Courageous Man of the Summer of 2010 does the most courageous thing he could possibly do under the circumstances.

He doesn't jump.

Instead, he turns around and climbs back down to rejoin the sensible people.

Down below, they either look at him with condolence or they do their very best to not look at him at all.

Our boy looks at him, looks at us, looks at him. I have no clue what was going on in his mind.

All I know is that The Most Courageous Man of the Summer of 2010, his blue Bermuda shorts bone dry, fetches his towel, and endures some good-natured ribbing from his pals. Then, leading his pack, he climbs the stone steps back out of the falls, past the information board that will not contain a tragic newspaper account with his name in it.